Legalize It

Despite the title, this blog entry has nothing to do with the famous Peter Tosh song. What I am referring to is the legalization of a 10 year, queer relationship. Woo-Hoo. Hurray for us.

A. and I have have talked frequently over the years about getting legal protections for our relationship since national, state and local law doesn't officially recognize our union as legitimate. But we have put it off for various reasons. Primarily, we have always thought we had plenty of time to take care of our arrangements, and also we have been reluctant to think about our deaths, property, power of attorney, and all the other things that come into play when you try to legalize an illegal domestic/romantic union.

But we aren't getting any younger and realized that the time to take action is now. So, we started the paper work today and by next week it should all be processed.

We are now, officially, legally, together in some aspects of the law. While it's not "real" marriage, it makes me feel good. Sad that some forms drawn up by a lawyer would have this effect on two people who, in our eyes, have been married for quite some time. But it's true. I feel different.

Today, I feel married and protected.

Time to crack open the champagne.

jb

Life in the Interstices

Life in the interstices.

Neither here nor there.

Neither this nor that.

A radical place to be?

jb

Spring Research Trip

I visited the coal fields of WV in May to see the family and do some research. Here are some pics from my trip.


This is a mountaintop removal mining site at Kayford, WV. About 1,000 feet of mountain tops are lopped off to unearth the coal. This site is actually a small one - 900 acres. The largest mountaintop removal site in WV is around 12,000 acres. 3 millions pounds of explosives are used everyday in the coalfields at MTR sites.

This was also taken on Kayford Mountain. The large truck is dumping the waste of this MTR operation over the decapitated mountain. But this material is no longer called "waste." The Bush administration re-wrote an environmental law and this waste is now referred to as "fill" which makes the dumping of it perfectly legal. To get a sense of the scope of MTR notice the ant-sized vehicles in the foreground of the picture.

Believe it or not, this is a water sample taken straight from the tap of a woman's house in McDowell county, WV. Reminds me of orange soda. This water sample is in Bill Price's office in Charleston. Bill is the local Sierra Club representative fighting the coal industry in the state.

This is the humble office of the Coal River Mountain Watch, an anti-mountaintop removal citizen's group in Boone County, WV. I spend most of my time here when researching in the coal fields. The building is full of local women who joined the group because of the incursions of coal on their homes and land. The mountain mural was painted by one of the members, Sarah, who told me that while she was painting it one motorist drove by and said "if you don't watch it, we'll blow up that mountain too." lovely, huh? She did say other motorists applauded and praised her efforts.

This the the sticker-ridden vehicle of activist Larry Gibson. He is sitting on land worth about 300 million dollars. He refuses to sell his property to coal companies so they are mining around him. The pics of the MTR site above is literally in Larry's backyard. He has received many death threats but continues to stand his ground.

I was trying to get a pic of the plate on the front of this car, but you can't see it clearly. It is a "Friends of Coal" sign that is common in the area. Friends of Coal is a front group for the WV Coal Association. They are engaged in a grassroots campaign to get as many people as possible to support the coal industry. Their propoganda campaigns are very successful as you see their license plates, bumper stickers and signs all over the coal fields.

Some anti-mtr activists paid to erect this billboard that originally said "Stop Destroying My Mountains," signed by God. Vandals changed the signator to "tree huggers," revealing the strong anti-environment presence in the coalfields. This pic was taken in Surveyor, WV on Rte 3 in Raleigh county.

The Gay Bomb

this is too surreal for words, but thought i would share it anyway.

http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_159222541.html


there are many, many problems with the logic here, but i love the assumption that if one suddenly became homosexual, they would be over-sexed.

jb

Going to Ireland

We bought our tickets last night for an Ireland vacation. We leave July 17 and return July 27. We would stay a bit longer, but we are constrained by a limited amount of vacation days, and Smith, who we don't want to leave in a kennel too long.

Anyway, we fly from JFK to Shannon. Anne hopes to do some research while there, and I'm going along for the ride, but I hope to learn about some Irish environmental programs while there.

JB

Reading Material

Here is a list of what I've been reading lately:

Richard Preston - The Wild Trees. Wonderful popular science book about recent discoveries of redwood trees in California. Turns out the tallest discovered was in the Fall of last year. It's name is Hyperion and it's 379.1 feet tall. Looking up at the 35 foot pine tree in my backyard, I can't even begin to fathom what this tall tree must look like.

Kate Coleman - The Secret Wars of Judi Bari: A Car Bomb, the Fight for the Redwoods, and the End of Earth First! An interesting book, but a bit too critical of her subject. It was obvious that Kate Coleman didn't particularly care for Judi Bari, which makes me wonder why she invested so much time and energy researching and writing about her.

Patrick Hossay- Unsustainable: A Primer for Global Environmental and Social Justice. Even though it is a primer, it's a fairly informative read, linking the political-economic forces of globalization to the natural world. After reading this you truly understand this mess we're in.

David Pellow & Robert Brulle - Power, Justice and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement. This is a collection of essays from sociologists critiquing the current state of environmental justice theory and praxis. Some of the essays are good, even though I don't fully agree with all of the critiques leveled. Interestingly enough, I bought this book at the World Bank bookstore in Washington D.C.

Andrew Dobson - Environmental Citizenship. A bit too philosophical for my purposes. Dobson is an environmental philosopher and I have used his books in the past. The most interesting aspect of this one is that the phrase "environmental citizenship" was coined by environment Canada - a preservationist department in the Canadian government. It stresses individual, civic responsibility to the natural world. I'm not sure how effective it has been, but interesting nonetheless.

Rinku Sen - Stir it Up: Lessons in Community Organizing and Advocacy. This book is an organizing 101 book with lots of case studies that serve as examples for various facets of political activism. It's a good handbook for any would be community activist.

Robert Gottlieb - Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. I first read this classic text is the late 90's. I revisited it recently to go over his "chick chapter" for an essay I'm working on.

Jennette Wall - The Glass Castle. In between all of this heavy environmental reading I also devoured this excellent memoir. It's beautifully written, and captures the experiences of a young girl growing up in an eccentric family. Wall is a gossip columinst for MSNBC.

In addition to these books, I have been reading weekly and monthly editions of Harper's, The Nation, The Progressive, Entertainment Weekly, and The New Republic.

Oh, and I read two academic articles recently: Heidi Hartmann's "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union." Read this in graduate school and revisited it recently for the essay I'm working on. STILL one of my all time favorite academic articles. I also read Cathryn Bailey's "We Are What We Eat: Feminist Vegetarianism and the Reproduction of Racial Identity." This was in a recent edition of Hypatia. Terribly classist perspective on vegetarianism.

So, this is my completed list.

Next Up:

Robert Kennedy's Crimes Against Nature
Mike Davis's Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb
Clifford Connor: A People's History of Science
Elizabeth Engelhardt - Tangled Roots of Feminism: Environmentalism and Appalachian Literature
Barbara Ellen Smith - Neither Separate Nor Equal: Race, Class and Gender in the South
Carolyn Sachs - Women Working in the Environment
Carolyn Sachs- Gendered Fields: Rural Women, Agriculture and Environment
Julian Agyeman. Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice.
Jeffrey Myers - Converging Stories: Race, Ecology and Environmental Justice in American Literature.

The Moribund Blog

Haven't felt like updating this blog recently. This is especially unfortunate because my last few entries were so damn depressing. Last month I was having a really hard time with my job situation. I have recently discovered that I don't like administrative work, and that I miss teaching terribly. After some painful emotional processing, I am once again on the hunt for that elusive tenure-track teaching position. Not too many jobs have been posted in the Spring, but I have applied to two so far. We will see what happens. In addition to job stress, I was having a rough time dealing with the realization that my mother is getting old. I was gearing up for her surprise 80th birthday party when I last posted, and was not accepting the fact that she is elderly. In turns out, that birthday party helped me to accept this fact a bit more.

Now, here it is a month later, and I feel much better. So much has been happening lately, but I haven't been into the blog. I must turn this thing around and re-energize my committment to it. For those of you who do follow these ramblings, I apologize for the hiatus and promise to write more frequently.

jb